GOP Senate candidate says Civil War wasn't about slavery

[groundloop]

Source: CBS News

Virginia Republican Senate candidate Corey Stewart said that he doesn't "believe that the Civil War was ultimately fought over the issue of slavery."

[snip]

"For the average person, 98 percent of those who fought in the Civil War, they did not own slaves," he said. "They were simply answering the call, and in this case many, many young men -- 17, 18 years old -- coming in to defend what they saw as a federal invasion of Virginia, and they fought honorably." Stewart also said that only some southerners wanted to secede because of slavery, and that the conflict was primarily about states' rights.

Stewart is the chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, and will face off against Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine in November. His past efforts to seek public office in Virginia include a 2012 bid for lieutenant governor and, most recently, a run for governor in 2017.

[snip]

A few months before the 2017 primary, he gave a speech in which he said Virginia was the state of "Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson," and that the Confederate flag "is our heritage, it's what makes us Virginia, and if you take that away, we lose our identity."

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gop-senate-candidate-corey-stewart-says-civil-war-wasnt-about-slavery/

---

"A federal invasion of Virginia"..... give me a break!!!!!!! Talk about rewriting history. And 'states rights', sure, Reagan went there also - that translates to the right to discriminate.

[dameatball]

1. Actually, my Repub brother still insists the civil war was a "trade war."

Not about slavery at all.

on the other hand, if your entire economy is based on slavery, I don't think that argument holds much water.

The South made a choice. It was the wrong choice.

[More_Cowbell]

26. "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina...."

“... from the Federal Union.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp

"But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations..."

Stephen Colbert, who's from South Carolina, pulls this information out anytime someone says that on his show.

[dameatball]

33. Yes, several states have a similar reasoning in their secession articles. Thanks

[Wolf Frankula]

2. That's odd

The seceshers in their letters and articles, said it was about slavery. Tell me Mr. Stewart, are you saying you're right and Jefferson Davis was wrong?

Wolf

[modrepub]

3. They lost the 1860 election, fired the first shots

and they still blame the federal government.

Oh, and that 2% figure just proves that the 98% have been getting screwed for a looooong time.

[JHB]

40. Yup. Lincoln hadn't even taken office...

...but they'd spent so much time breathing and rebreathing each others' hot air that they knew -- KNEW! -- he was a tyrant and acted on what they "knew".

Kinda like the Republican party for the last quarter century.

[Yonnie3]

4. It will be an interesting campaign here.

Too bad things like tarring and feathering as well as that riding him out of town on a rail thing are not acceptable now days. Since we will not do that, we will shame him at the polls. We've got work to do.

[unblock]

5. sure, white supremacy is about slavery, but it's about so much more!

[ffr]

6. The 1929 Great Depression and 2007 Great Recession were also the fault of...Democrats

The revisionist history being repeated by conservatives will make you wonder where these people get the cajones to even come out in public to repeat such malarkey. But they do.

[GulfCoast66]

7. He has not read the preamble of the act of succession of the confederate states

They flat out announce they are leaving to protect slavery

[Brother Buzz]

8. "Twenty Negro Law", Baby. There's a reason most of the Confederate troops didn't own slaves

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Negro_Law

[keithbvadu2]

20. The poor were drafted so that many slaveowners did not have to fight

from the article....

The Confederacy enacted the first conscription laws in United States history,[3] and the percentage of Confederate soldiers who were conscripts was nearly double that of Union soldiers.

The law would prove extremely unpopular with poorer white Confederate men, many of whom did not own any slaves at all, and would contribute to the often-repeated adage of the Confederate war effort being "a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight."[4]

[struggle4progress]

9. Virginia Constitution of 1861

... ARTICLE IV ... Slaves and Free Negroes.

19. Slaves hereafter emancipated shall forfeit their freedom by remaining in the Commonwealth more than twelve months after they become actually free, and it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to prescribe proper regulations for reducing such negroes to slavery.

20. The General Assembly may profit the future emancipation of slaves, impose such restrictions and conditions as they shall deem proper on the power of slave owners to emancipate their slaves; and may pass laws for the relief of the Commonwealth from the free negro population, by removal or otherwise.

21. The General Assembly shall not emancipate any slave, or the descendant of any slave, either before or after the birth of such descendant ...

http://confinder.richmond.edu/admin/docs/va1861.pdf

[ADX]

10. Revisionist history bullshit...

...they've been trying to pimp that notion for decades but we know better...

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Oh? So that is why the South offered to give up slavery to save the union? :eyes:

[SansACause]

12. Bullshit statistic.

This "only 2% of those who fought owned slaves" is one of those bullshit statistics that keeps coming around. That's because people forget that in those days, slaves were typically owned by the plantation owner (i.e., one guy), while the whole family lived on the plantation. In reality, over 50% of households in the South owned slaves.

[thucythucy]

18. The 2% figure is bullshit in so many ways.

Here's what I pulled up by googling "How many white southerners owned slaves?"

"State-by-state figures show some variation. In Mississippi, 49 percent of families owned slaves, and in South Carolina, 46 percent did. In border states, the percentage was lower -- 3 percent in Delaware and 12 percent in Maryland. The median for slaveholding states was about 27 percent."

The statistic he's citing comes from a viral post sent around by--guess who--a white supremacist.

[olegramps]

44. Just because they didn't own slaves doesn't mean they didn't approve of slavery.

Blacks were considered to be mentally deficient and inferior to Whites. This concept was clearly expressed even by Lincoln. These beliefs were clearly stated in several of his speeches such as on June 26. 1857. He said that he could not marry a negro because they were inferior. He was abhorred by the mixing of white blood and negro blood and made point of this in arguing against slavery in which white masters had breed over 400,000 mulattoes. (The census of 1850 found there were 405,751 mulattoes) He stated that "Very few of these are the offspring of whites and free blacks; nearly all have sprung from slaves and white masters." He made this assertion in several speeches that he made during the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. The complete collection was published in "Abraham Lincoln in His Own Words".

[ThoughtCriminal]

29. 32% according to 1860 Census

You are quite right about the statistic - that 2% includes the children and spouses of the "slave owner" which would only be the (usually male) head of household. The rest of the family were not considered to be "slave owners". (And families were LARGE in that era). Hilariously, the 2% figure is also too low and must also include the slaves themselves as part of the total population.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/09/slavery_myths_seven_lies_half_truths_and_irrelevancies_people_trot_out_about.html
<snip>
According to the 1860 census, taken just before the Civil War, more than 32 percent of white families in the soon-to-be Confederate states owned slaves. Of course, this is an average, and different states had different levels of slaveholding. In Arkansas, just 20 percent of families owned slaves; in South Carolina, it was 46 percent; in Mississippi, it was 49 percent.

By most measures, this isn’t “small”—it’s roughly the same percentage of Americans who, today, hold a college degree. The large majority of slaveholding families were small farmers and not the major planters who dominate our image of “slavery.”
</snip>
----

But that does not tell the entire story. Other statistics I've seen (but unfortunately do not have a handy link) show that men who served in the Confederate army were more likely to come from a slave-owning family so the number would be closer 50%. And for officers, the percentage was even higher.

This neo-confederate republican candidate also ignores the fact that the leaders who decided to start the war were 100% slave owners. As for the rest, their leaders, their employers, their churches, their schools all taught them one thing: If the slaves were ever freed, they would rape the white women, murder them, steal their property and their jobs. There were very few poor white southerners who did not believe this and that, no matter how matter how impoverished and uneducated they were, they were still superior to coloreds. So they fought along with their slave-owning comrades.

[struggle4progress]

13. Constitution of the Confederate States of America (March 11, 1861)

... Article I ... Sec. 9 ...

(4) No .. law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed ...

ARTICLE IV ... Sec. 2.

(I) The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired ...

(3) No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs, or to whom such service or labor may be due ...

Sec. 3 ...

(3) The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States ...

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp

[keithbvadu2]

14. The States' Rights to conduct the slave trade.

[Major Nikon]

38. Actually the Civil War was fought specifically against states' rights

Listed in several of the confederate states' articles of secession was a grievance with the northern states' right to free slaves within their borders.

Nobody was contesting the "rights" of the southern states to own people within their own borders. The issue for them was the expansion and propagation of slavery outside their borders.

[beachbum bob]

15. Called make shit up....love it

Need to tie every republican running to this moron....

[keithbvadu2]

16. Official republican position - Lincoln was our nation's greatest leader

Official republican position - Lincoln was our nation's greatest leader

This is the official position of today's republicans.

"One hundred and fifty years ago, Americans who had gathered to protest the expansion of slavery gave birth to a political Party that would save the Union - the Republican Party.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois carried the Republican banner in the Presidential election and was elected the Party's first President. He became our nation's greatest leader … and one of our Party's greatest heroes. "

from the 2004 GOP Platform

[murielm99]

17. In junior high, I had a teacher who said that

the Civil War was not fought over slavery. He said it was fought over whether or not any state had the right to secede. This was in the early sixties, just before Kennedy became President. I live in the North.

[Major Nikon]

39. That warped idea came out of the Civil Rights Era

It was an attempt by some in the South to whitewash the Civil War.

[struggle4progress]

19. Five myths about why the South seceded

By James W. Loewen
Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Vermont
February 26, 2011

... Confederates opposed states’ rights — that is, the right of Northern states not to support slavery ...

During the nadir of post-civil-war race relations — the terrible years after 1890 when town after town across the North became all-white “sundown towns” and state after state across the South prevented African Americans from voting — “anything but slavery” explanations of the Civil War gained traction ...

... High tariffs had prompted the Nullification Controversy in 1831-33, when, after South Carolina demanded the right to nullify federal laws or secede in protest, President Andrew Jackson threatened force. No state joined the movement, and South Carolina backed down. Tariffs were not an issue in 1860, and Southern states said nothing about them. Why would they? Southerners had written the tariff of 1857, under which the nation was functioning. Its rates were lower than at any point since 1816.

... ideological factors caused most Southern whites, including those who were not slave-owners, to defend slavery ... Americans are wondrous optimists, looking to the upper class and expecting to join it someday. In 1860, many subsistence farmers aspired to become large slave-owners ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths-about-why-the-south-seceded/2011/01/03/ABHr6jD_story.html?utm_term=.267ff7f90654

[Demsrule86]

21. My Mother's family has lived in Virginia since the 1600's. Our family sent sons to both sides during

the Civil War...it was a border state...no one flies the flag of treason except idiots like this loser.

[Paladin]

22. Neo-confederate revisionist HORSESHIT. (nt)

[Progressive dog]

23. Unfortunately, there are lots of people that spread that crap.

They just want to make America great again; just like their racist, misogynist, psychopathic leader. They think America was great before the Civil War.

[Alpeduez21]

24. Corey Stewart is an ass hat

[The Genealogist]

25. Revisionist garbage

The "Southern Cause" was anything but noble. It was about maintaining the right to own other human beings.

[Thomas Hurt]

27. standard right wing revisionism...

the civil war wasn't about slavery it was about states rights (the states rights to keep slavery) and freedom (the freedom to take it from others), the KKK was an organization of the left wing instead of the reactionary right.

Fascism is a leftist ideology characterized by jingoism, racism, scapegoating and militarism...you know just what your average liberal believes in....

[Blue_Tires]

28. Ah... So we have George Allen 2.0...

Good luck with that shit...

[paleotn]

30. How does the Union army invade US territory?

States rights....oh yea, the right to enslave black people...got it. I guess shithead needs a little primer on Alexander Stephen's cornerstone speech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech

[still_one]

31. Revisionist, racist, bullshit. The South wanted to persevere slavery, it is simple and morally

reprehensible as that.

This is is the kind of garbage that a faux new's guest would regurtitate to their audience.

[Cryptoad]

32. Every State in the ,,,,

confederacy had Articles of Secession that spell it out clearly the why of their secession. from the union.

Trumpsters be warned: Reading can seriously damage ur ignorance. !

[Va Lefty]

34. This is a thing. Don't dismiss it out of hand.

I was taught in High School History class in the late 70's, to refer to the Civil War as "The War of Northern Aggression". I don't agree with it, but this is not new.

[RockRaven]

35. This guy would much rather argue about the Civil War than defend GOP on health care, taxes, etc.

Virtually across the board, issue by issue the majority of voters prefer Dem policies to GOP policies. So Stewart needs to make his campaign about right wing identity politics to mobilize his potential voters. If it's a policy-driven campaign he'll lose, because a lot of those voters will stay home. Hopefully Kaine doesn't spend any time wallowing around in this garbage, no matter how wrong Stewart is.

[Prof.Higgins]

36. Lest we forget Republican Pres. Eisenhower sent 101st Airborne Division to "invade" Arkansas for

the protection of children integrating Little Rock Central. This was an enforcement of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown vs The Board of Education to desegregate public schools in America.

Although Ike was not real happy with this SCOTUS decision, Arkansas Gov. Orville Faubus, forced Ike's hand by ordering the state's National Guard to block these children from enrolling. Ike not only sent in the 101st Airborne to escort the kids, but subsequently nationalized the Arkansas Guardsmen.

Faubus was a Democrat who continued to serve another decade after Ike's "invasion", so he was in office when Pres. Johnson persuaded Congress to pass significant civil rights legislation, the enforcement elements of which have been degraded recently by SCOTUS.

[salin]

37. The language of the speeches in the Lincoln-Douglas debates lays bare to this claim.

History - has documents that are more accurate than the opinion of a contemporary racist/revisionist.

[Judi Lynn]

41. They know no one decent is buying their filthy lie, and no one sane ever has.

Why on earth do they imagine there was a civil war? It was about human rights.

It's taking the dirty descendants of the original monsters a long time to go away, but they will never win, in the end. Never.

[AZ8theist]

42. DISGUSTING PHOTOS

[tclambert]

43. In "Gettysburg," a rebel prisoner explains that they were fighting for their rats.

That's in the 1993 film version.

[Bradical79]

45. A too common view pushed in education for decades

History courses in middle school and highschool for me always lionized some of the Confederacy's generals, and pushed a not so subtle "states' rights" narritive.

[ProfessorGAC]

46. The Union "Invaded" Virginia

Yeah, not long after the CSA declared WAR on the United States. That's a pretty obvious fact to leave out, unless one knows that including it completely negates one's position.

Oh, and this guy is an idiot.